Delta College names new vice president of Student Empowerment and Success

Delta College / News / Delta College names new vice president of Student Empowerment and Success

May 9, 2024

Shelly Raube female wearing dark-rimmed glasses, cropped hair, smiling wearing light blue blazer for a photo

Shelly Raube, vice president of Student Empowerment and Success

Delta College’s leadership team announced the appointment of Shelly Raube as the new vice president of Student Empowerment and Success.

Growing up in Wisconsin, Raube, and her identical twin sister were basically attached at the hip. They did nearly everything together, and even wore matching clothes until after high school when it became less “socially acceptable.” They continued to study together at Carthage College and earned their bachelor’s degrees and after graduating from Illinois State University with their master’s degrees, they moved across the pond to the Great Lakes Bay Region in 1999.

The twins found work together as athletic trainers before jointly starting a personal training business, fittingly called, “Twin Peak Performance” — pun intended. But that business goes by another name now, because in 2008, Raube made one of the best and most difficult decisions of her life when she accepted a position at Delta College as an athletic trainer. Not without her sister’s full support, Raube diverted from the path they had forged together and found her true calling in higher education.

How does one go from athletic trainer to vice president of Student Empowerment and Success? With passion, dedication, unparalleled leadership and more passion. “I always put the student first,” said Raube. “I’ve always had that at the center of my work.” During her tenure as the athletic director, Raube created a familial culture within the athletic department. Retention rates were high and student athletes excelled — on the court and in the classroom.

Raube reflected on her 16 years at Delta and the many student resources she had a hand in bringing to campus, including more recent initiatives like Uwill and CREW, and she found overwhelming joy in the impact she has made with the help of her stellar teams. “It’s exciting to put great teams together to make great things happen,” she says.

She sees herself as a leader who listens to the students and truly hears their voices to then act as their advocate for impactful change. “That’s why we’re here. We’re here to make sure our students can see themselves earning that degree. We’re here to remove some of those barriers so they can walk across that graduation stage.”